


kenopsia

by LovelyLessie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 17:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLessie/pseuds/LovelyLessie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>n. the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet—a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds—an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs. (from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)</p>
            </blockquote>





	kenopsia

Alone.

That's all there is now.

Alone.

–

There's no past except a hand opening and a voice howling, and silence.

There's no future except this. Forever.

There's now. Silence. Darkness.

Nothing more.

–

You have no name now.

–

You have nothing now. No name, no voice, perhaps not even a face to call your own. The one that looks back at you from the black water isn't yours. You can't remember what yours was.

You have the cold and the quiet and the dark, and an eternity of this: tired bones and tired thoughts and following a path you know leads nowhere. You have emptiness, no emotions now, no fear or pain or want.

You're alone.

You always have been.

_Almost._

–

Before, there was—

_Cold is only an absence of heat; dark is only an absence of light; silence is only an absence of sound. Absence is meaningless without the context of presence._

_—_ a voice that called out a name you can't remember.

A presence. You cannot name it, you cannot give it form or face. Still its absence is so conspicuous it is more than the lack of a presence. It is a vacuum left behind.

–

A word falls from your lips in a whisper, in a language all but forgotten.

–

They no longer come near you. You think they have forgotten you.

You have forgotten yourself, after all.

You have also forgotten their names. It doesn't matter any longer.

They leave you alone. You don't think they can see you.

There isn't enough left of you to be seen.

–

Alone is the last thing you have.

It's familiar by now but it still feels strange and almost frightening _._ Because you can't remember it but there's a faint impression still left on you by something far greater than yourself and a small piece of you aches for it desperately.

You don't know what it is you miss, but you recognize missing it nevertheless.

–

You sleep and in your sleep you don't dream and you wake upon the same empty world you left. If you could you would sleep forever.

It gets harder and harder to rise and turn to the darkness and keep walking into it as you've been doing for as long as you remember.

_Almost._

But you do it.

–

Your voice is strange in the silence as you give a name to the feeling. It's the echo of something that _was_ but _isn't_ now, a negative space, an inverted figure. Your eyes cannot help but search the empty road beside you for something that isn't there. Your hand cannot help but reach out for something your skin still longs for, even thought you can't name it.

Your chest feels hollow. It is beyond loneliness. It is an afterimage of lost emotion and you cannot shake the chill that has settled over you from it.

–

You sleep and you wake and you walk again, aimlessly into the gray mist, until your eyes are heavy and your limbs ache, and then you curl up on the ground and sleep. When you wake, each time, you do it all again. Endlessly. Eternally.

One foot after another.

Head down. Hands limp. Heart empty.

The only way you know.

... _Almost._

–

Before, there was--

_Bright, angry, desperate eyes and a voice that shouted a name you almost remember. A hand that grabbed yours. Running, running and your footsteps in time with his. Shared heat, hands on your shoulders. Pain, sharp, burning; comfort in the form of whispered words and strong arms. Fear. Hope. Compassion._

\--a man.

A man whose absence has left a void inside you.

A man whose name you have forgotten.

–

_Almost._


End file.
